WINSOME IS AS WINSOME DOES

Personality in the columns of the Daily Mirror, Mr. Godfrey Winn has selected some of the most telling pages from his causerie and embellished them with portraits of himself (including a frontispiece reproduced " By courtesy of Everywoman "), several pictures of his pet dog, and a photograph

(supposed to illustrate the iniquities of " blood sports ") of startled hounds at bay before an apparently stuffed stag.

In his foreword, Mr. Winn tells us about the ideals which guide his pen, and in particular how, when he set out to write, " instead of being content to fill up the page with third-rate (and often third-hand) gossip " he resolved " to speak the truth," " the truth, tempered always by decency, lit

eternally by admiration and enthusiasm and utter sincerity." He has, he confesses, made mistakes ; " But there is this com-

fort. I have stuck to my guns and my loyalty has been absolute." " Once before," he tells his readers, " I promised—I am at your service. That promise still stands, and always will stand now. For just as Noel Coward has said : ' It is pretty exciting to be an Englishman ' ; so do I think that it is pretty exciting to be a crusader."

Is this sincere ? It clearly is, and that is what makes this book so

peculiar, and so unpleasant, a piece of writing. If Mr. Winn were not sincere, his performance would be no more interesting,

and no more deplorable, than that of a hundred paid hypocrites who write in the daily and the weekly Press. But Mr. Winn, either naturally, or by a prolonged course of self-hypnosis, believes what he says, and his parade of his personality is, therefore, a really remarkable phenomenon.

True to his resolve, Mr. Winn eschews " third-rate gossip " in favour of nobler themes ; it is his aim to give us " All of }humanity," as he elegantly puts it, " on a Single Page." He displays deep feeling in a number of humane causes ; he wishes to brighten the drab life of the City worker, to awaken sympathy for the unemployed, to help the " down-and- out," to encourage the " underdog " ; he feels keenly the horrors of war, and he is evidently an ardent Christian. No one, will question the importance of these topics or the sincerity of Mr. Winn's feelings, and few decent-minded people will feel differently from him about them. But the nobler Mr. Winn's theme, the more deeply does his treatment degrade it ; the stronger one's feeling in favour of the cause he under- takes, the more one regrets that it should have fallen to him, for all his " decency " and " enthusiasm," his " eternal admiration " and his " utter sincerity," to act as its " Crusader." Take, as what may almost literally be called a crucial example, his method of broaching one deep spring of Christian feeling :

" Will you look at the picture on this page—not just a passing glance but a proper look? What is in the picture ? A wing of an aeroplane, a mass of mountains, the sea line in the background ? Is that all ?

" Look more closely. " There's something white on top of one of the mountains. And that something white is the stone figure of a Man who lived two thousand years ago and preached the same message of peace and goodwill on earth that 1 am trying as best I can to echo today."

There is nothing insincere in this ; but there is something almost more distasteful than insincerity—an attitude of mind well exemplified in Mr. Winn's criticism (dated " Tredegar Park, Monmouthshire. Sunday ") of the Oxford Group :

" I cannot see why Dr. Buchman should be attacked for his publicity methods. True, they are slick, flashy, successful. Is that a crime against God ? " No ; it is just a crime against good taste.

Again, there is no doubt that by his warm human sympathy, his keen desire to be of service to his fellow-men, Mr. Winn

has won the gratitude of numbers of his readers. Personal contacts afford him opportunities for such service. On a steamer, for instance, he fell in with a young woman (" she was 28, I discovered, had been married six years, and had two ripping kids ") who was in doubt whether to desert her husband for her lover. She confided in Mr. Winn (" Perhaps the incredible beauty of the night made her loneliness too much to bear, she had to confide in some one. And I happened to be there ") ; he was able to give her advice, and his advice (though expressed in a metaphor not wholly correct) was excellent

" Marriage can either be a legalised love affair, or it can be an insurance policy against old age. Children are the dividends that policy pays. Go back to your husband . . ." All credit to Mr. Winn for this exhortation, and to the young woman for acting on it. What is difficult to stomach is his telling us about it in the way he does, and in particular his concluding comment : " And her smile suddenly made me understand what

the smile of Mona Lisa really means." Mona Lisa, by the way, is an old favourite of Mr. Winn's " Secretly," he tells us, (speaking of " Joan," his " secretary, office-wife, working comrade, call her what you will "), " I have christened her

the Mona Lisa of the office." -Why not keep that secret ?

So far is Mr. Winn from incurring the charge of insincerity

that there is a streak of naivete running through his pages : " I am not ashamed to admit that I have ideals and beliefs and a sentimental approach to life. But that sentimental approach doesn't stop me from seeing the sordid things, though I just feel there is no point in dwelling on them all the time."

Not all the time ; and a couple of pages later we find him for- getting Jarrow among the beau monde of Smith Square :

" At lunch at Mulberry House, Westminster, where Lord and Lady Melchett live . . . my eyes travel from face to face. From the pale Rossetti beauty of my hostess . . . to the modern good looks of Lady Duff Assheton-Smith, and to the white hair and pink cheeks of that brilliant scientist, Sir James Jeans."

In short, All of Humanity on a Single Page.

And not humanity alone : we must not forget, we are not allowed to forget, the ubiquitous Mr. Sponge. For Mr. Winn keeps a dog, and that dog, there can be no question of it, helps to keep Mr. Winn. There is nothing the great public likes so much as a dog (prevention of cruelty to children takes a back seat when prevention of cruelty to these creatures is concerned), and Mr. Sponge is ill constant attendance on his master ; sometimes they are together in the study :

" Don't you agree, old man ? But Mr. Sponge does not stir. He is asleep at my feet, completely comatose because he has just had his dinner and before that a wonderful walk over Oxshott Common, completely at peace because his master is writing at home, for once. Poor old fellow, I think. . . ." ;

sometimes they are in the garden : " I said to Mr. Sponge, pointing with my gardening scissors between the chopping : 'Look. at that rose, old man. An hour ago it reminded of a woman in full bloom ' . ."

There, then, is a portrait of our modern crusader, attended by Joan -his secretary, by Mr. Sponge his dog, and by " My Mother in the Garden of our Cottage," with his weapons of

" enthusiasm and admiration and utter sincerity " and a prose style so arch, so cosy, as to give a new meaning to the

word Winsome, setting out to do battle for causes which demand decency if not nobility of utterance. One does not doubt the truth of the picture ; but how hard it is not to regret the fidelity of the artist, not to wish that this nauseous